We like to eat. Actually we like to eat a lot and as it turns out, much of what we do when we are away is go to nice restaurants and eat hopefully nice things. Take the recent weekend in Toronto trip we just did, 3 of the highlights were the restaurants we visited.
But it's also meant to reflect what other stuff we get up to as well.
Take a couple of weeks back, our son Alex had a combined 30th birthday party/new house party and decided he wanted to cook a whole pig. Actually a Bermuda hogge, if you want to be precise.
He talked about it endlessly and had the notion of digging out a fire pit at his new house and cook it there. The question was how.
Of course he could have bought a fancy set up but as he had a neat flower bed available decided to dig it out (and dump the earth everywhere else in his new garden), build it up with a few concrete blocks and cover it with some wire mesh and above that some sort of corregated iron to keep the heat in and give the pig the smoke taste.
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| Getting the fire going very early indeed |
We visited Wadson's Farm to check out the porcine inhabitants and found a litter of week olds running around and then a group of 1-year old 70 pounders. Given that there could likely be 60 people at the party, the small piggies wouldn't work at all so that meant the bigger porkers.
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| Not sure which one it was, but it was one of these guys! |
I wasn't part of the pick up crew but was present when the stomach cavity emptied porker was pulled out of the big black bin bag (where it had been marinating overnight) and spread upon the wire mesh above the fire pit.
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| Alex and the Hogge |
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| Fire pit in all its Heath Robinson-like glory! |
This would take 10 hours to cook so Viv and I came and went a few times during the day until the lovely chap was ready.
Talk about flavor! The skin was fantastic as was the meat. Why is it that really fatty stuff like this tastes so good?
The fire pit worked so well, I've decided I want one now!
The party rocked too!
